Anxiety disorders are one of the most common mental health problems in the United States. Considering the enormous cost and impairment associated with anxiety disorders, researchers have begun to call for greater efforts toward prevention. The translational development of prevention programs requires a sophisticated understanding of the vulnerability processes that contribute to anxiety. Although current etiological models of anxiety disorders emphasize the importance of both internal diatheses and external stressors, few studies have directly tested a diathesis-stress model of anxiety, leaving a gap between the literature on stress processes and individual vulnerability factors. The objective of this application is to study how one prime vulnerability candidate, perceived control, confers risk for anxiety within a diathesis-stress framework. Specifically, this study proposes to use a between- and within-subject design to examine how perceived control and environmental stress interact to predict subjective, neurohormonal, and cognitive responses to stressful and neutral stimuli. Psychologically healthy individuals with high and low levels of perceived control (N = 80) will complete two days of testing using a high-workload (high stress) and low-workload (low stress) computerized divided attention task (DAT). After the divided attention task, subjects will complete a computerized cognitive performance task (CPT). Repeated assessment of subjective anxiety and stress-related salivary biomarkers will be conducted at initial presentation, rested baseline, post-DAT, post-CPT, and two times during recovery to capture both peak responsivity to the divided attention task and latency to recovery. The central hypothesis is that subjects with low levels of perceived control will exhibit enhanced biological reactivity, report greater subjective anxiety, and demonstrate greater cognitive impairment but only following the high-workload (high stress) divided attention task compared to those with high levels of perceived control. These findings would be consistent with the diathesis-stress model in that a diminished sense of control is predicted to enhance risk for anxiety only in the presence of aversive conditions. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This study would be the first to experimentally test perceived control as a dispositional diathesis using a multi-method measurement approach. The results of this study are expected to enhance insight into the link between biological and psychological vulnerability to stress and advance the translational development of anxiety prevention by identifying risk processes prior to the onset of illness that may be targeted in prevention strategies.